


the second hand unwinds

by HerbertBest



Category: 6969 - Ninja Sex Party (Song), Game Grumps, Ninja Sex Party (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bittersweet, French Revolution, Friendship, Leaving, Loss, Making Friends, Mentors, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, Prohibition, Reincarnation, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates, pre-history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:01:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9497201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerbertBest/pseuds/HerbertBest
Summary: Brian and Dan meet and part over the centuries - in different bodies, with different names, with different kinds of relationships - but with the same connection keeping them bound closely together.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lygerzero14](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lygerzero14/gifts).



> From a prompt posted to my Tumblr:
> 
> Ninja Ship Party: the one where soulmates are reincarnated and keep finding each other throughout their different lives.

**3,000 years B.C.**

 

Bron clambered up the back of the saber tooth, his face buried in the thick fur of the pack animal. Bron masterfully spurred the animal toward the pack’s hunting grounds, where they would surely find beasts enough to satisfy their family.

 

A yelp barely made his strong shoulders flinch. For, and as long as Bron could remember, Don had been beside him, hatchet in hand and a very loud laugh on his lips. 

 

At the moment, Don was running, huffing to keep up, his long hair streaming behind him as he tried to climb onto Bron’s back. “Hunt soon,” he said, as they skidded down the pathway.

 

Bron grunted in agreement, words beyond him, never being as easy for him as they were for Don. The difference in their evolution had always been so clear to Bron, but Don had stepped right over that boundary. In more ways than one.

 

Bron would remember, every lifetime afterward, the gold of the afternoon sun on this final day of his life. Remember the sound of Don’s laugh and the smell of his skin, and the way Bron's flesh rippled between his thighs. Sometimes it was a clear sensation. Sometimes it was a snatch of a memory. But always it danced around the back of his brain, haunting and poking at him, like embers sparked from a fire.

 

*** 

 

It wasn’t the mammoth that got him, but antelope, flushed from the underbush, running pal mel for freedom. Not even the greatest warrior had defense for a crowd crush; he could not save himself from their hooves in the end.

 

The heat of Don’s arms around him were the only things anchoring him to the planet, his words thick and frantic. “Name, baby…baby for you, Bron! No leave?” 

 

But Bron faded out and away from the glen, his lover’s voice mournful and desperate as the world turned white gold all around him, pulling him free of the wreck and into a new world.

 

*** 

**1300 AD,  
London, England**

 

This is Dan’s favorite life, the one he keeps trying to re-live again and again, and the one he absolutely can’t seem to get back to no matter how many times he re-creates it in the present. 

 

He began as a miller’s son, apprenticed to a baker, hoping to become a vassal of the king. He happened to be out delivering said bread to the castle’s steward when he noticed a man in dark clothing, floating face-down in the moat. His quick thinking and knowledge of swimming helped him save the man’s life.

 

Protecting the king’s man at arms, Sir Brian, had resulted in his being elevated up the social ladder. Determined to earn the trust of the knight, Daniel followed him on the Crusades, back to France, finally home. But it was Brian’s clever insight that would eventually win him knighthood.

 

It was Brian who eventually found him Anastasia. Anastasia who had been penned up in her border lord father’s stronghold, which Brian and Daniel had fought through numerous men, through a moat, over an ivory-covered wall, to rescue her from life in a convent. 

 

And if her hair was less golden then the legend had insisted, if her breath was not sweet, if she was less temperate in manner than he had been told, then Daniel did not notice, for he so adored the lady that love overwhelmed his reason. Within hours of their marriage, Sir Brian knew his work was done.

 

He stayed long enough to see Daniel knighted, and then walked from the safety of the walls that had nurtured him since he was a vassal. Daniel caught up, of course. He always did know when Brian was trying to walk out on him.

 

“But who,” Daniel asked, as he rode with Brian to the edge of the woods, “will teach my children the ways of battle?”

 

Brian pulled his scarf from around his neck and looped it around Daniel’s neck. “You will,” he rasped. 

 

Then he walked alone to the golden woods, to a life of solitude…and dullness.

 

**** 

**1790,  
France**

 

The commander’s son was a libertine. 

 

Bryant knew this when he agreed to become the boy’s tutor. It was why he believed he was particularly suited to his education. Three hours of literature, two hours of fencing, and one of mathematics every single day for five years, and the boy still had a head for nothing but women and wine.

Bryant thought it was a shame. No ruler, no lesson, no demand could marry the boy to his duties; nothing could impress upon him the import of his fate, the fact that he would soon be in the army as his father was, would soon be expected to serve in the name of the government.

 

When the revolution came, so exited expectations. And all of those women and much of the wine.

 

Leontine and Bryant spent hours in the basement of Leontine’s family home, listening to the mobs shout outside the window. How the boy came down with smallpox Bryant never knew, but he nursed the stubborn, golden boy right through to his end.

 

His last words were as nonsensical as all of the ones he’d spoken before them, near the midnight hour, as outside the guillotine’s blade fell. “There will be pudding again, won’t there?” the boys’ eyes rolled, dark and sad, in his skull as his life drained away. “Pudding…and fool.”

 

Bryant clipped a lock of hair for the boys’ mother and stuffed it in his pocket before covering his nose and rushing to the street outside, his ‘Vive la France’ blending into the shouts of the thousands around him, indistinct, unnoticed.

 

**** 

**1924,  
Bayou Country, LA**

 

Leigh has been steeping gin all afternoon, cleaning out the stills, bottling finished brews with the rubber hose leftover. There would be plenty to sell when Alex came home with the truck. Plenty of people who would crawl across broken glass just to have more of their home brew. 

 

She wiped her face and leaned against the kitchen counter. She ought to be baking but who had the energy for it in a heatwave like this one? 

 

Who had the energy to do anything but stare at the sun as it beat down on all of their unfortunate heads? Leigh, who usually possessed boundless energy, found herself fading as she waited for Alex to come. Fading, even as hope 

 

***

 

The bootlegging enterprise was Alex’s idea. It’s a buyer’s market, he’d reasoned; give the fools what they want with his momma’s recipe for hard cider and gin, and then get out as quickly as they could. Their roadside stand was well-paid for with bribes. They were, as far as Leigh knew, in the clear.

But she should’ve known better.

 

***

 

Never stop for headlights, she thought to herself, clinging to Alex’s hand as they dove into the darkness as bullets sang through the branches overhead. Never, ever stop for headlights.

 

*** 

 

They knew there were gators in the belly of the swamp when they dove in. As the brown water swirled over Leigh’s head she told herself: it’s better than bullets.

 

***

 

**The Present  
** **Or maybe the future  
7024, America**

 

*** 

 

It was all Danny’s fault. 

 

His idea to go back to the future. He had been so excited, so happy, so thrilled to see the changes he’d wrought. “Maybe we have a badass statue in the middle of the fucking town! Wouldn’t that be rad?”

 

Brian glowered at the cement wall that had been taunting him ever since they’d been deposited into prison. Yes, it’d been very rad of them to return to the future, only to discover that the obstetric nightmare that they’d left behind had pared the female population to a fourth of what it was during the “great orgy of 6969’. That the new leader of the establishment had Dan’s eyes and Kristen’s picture pressed to his heart wasn’t surprising. That he’d shot them down and captured them didn’t surprise Brian either – his luck had never run smoothly. That Danny didn’t seem to understand that he’d literally sewn his own doom, though, that stuck in Brian’s gut like a led balloon.

 

That was the way of a time loop. It had a way of sealing itself. They’d fucked up by going to the future, and now fate was trying to wash the slate clean. According to his calculations they didn’t have much time left. Death was locked onto their scent, hot and sharp, clanging around in his head. 

 

Brian yanked his hood up, “for the love of Christ, what the hell were you babbling about?”

 

Dan’s eyes were large and stark as they shot up from the side of the wall. He pointed to the seam between wall and floor; to his amazement, there was a hole there, circular in nature, something that had been stomped through in secret by Dan over the months while Brian was distracted. He’d been lost within himself, deeply meditating, trying to find a way out of the fast-sealed doom around him.

 

Dan panted, leaned against the wall, pointed to the void. “There should be time enough for one of us to go before they know we’re gone.”

 

Brian grabbed Dan by the wrist but he pulled back, shaking his head. “No. Go home, Bri. Go home to your girl, to your kid…” His shove was surprisingly firm as the pushed Brian face-first though the hole he’d hewn in the wall. Sitting on his ass on the grassy, chilled mud outside the jail wall, he saw Dan’s wan features peering down at him through the gloom. “I’m the one they’ll be looking for, and I don’t have that much waiting for me back there. But you, you’ve got everything. I’ll try to find you, man. I’ll fight my way out.” He lurched downward, pressed his lips hard and fast to Brian’s cheek until he fell ungracefully off his feet and back from the gap. “If I’m not there in five minutes, bring the Time Musheen home!”

 

Brian waited for ten minutes before going to home to his daughter. 

 

He and his wife had another child, years later, when the silly whirl of galaxy conquering and puppies in space and furniture-fucking seemed like a joke he’d spoken to the girl who clung to his side. 

 

They called him Daniel.

 

**** 

**The Not-too-distant Future  
Seaside Heights, New Jersey**

A tiny, soft voice came from over the girl’s shoulder. “Oh my Gosh. You have _ninja stars!_

The other little girl hunched over her treasure, bright blue eyes piercing into the dark ones of the interloper. She had never seen this one before. She must be the new here. 

“Do you like ninjas?” The other girl’s expression was open, curious, and fearless. She was wearing a blue cardigan and a mussed flowered dress, and her hair was wild, sticking out in red-brown uneven waves. “I LOVE ninjas. One day I’m going to grow up and I’m going to kick so much butt and then I’m going to buy a pony and I’m going to ride around rescuing princesses.” She grinned and slammed her feet into the back of the girl’s seat. “It’s going to be SO COOL!”

The girl climbed up on her knees and, one hand clinging to her stars, started signing with a single hand, not expecting the other girl to understand. _Girls can’t rescue princesses!_

The dark-haired girl frowned and signed back. _They can too!_

Blinking, the blue-eyed one almost fell off her seat. She tried, through a clogged throat injured by a long-ago illness, to rasp out real words. “How can you do that?”

The girl shrugged. “My uncle’s deaf,” she explained, then flushed and started signing, _Are you too?_

 _I can hear_ , the girl signed, _Can’t talk. I was sick when I was a baby._

“Oh,” the girl said. “Anyway, I can prove it, that girls can rescue princesses!” 

_How?_

“It’s all in my favorite book. I don’t have it with me, but I’ll bring it for you to read tomorrow.” She tucked her chin into the curve of her palm. “My name’s Leighton, but I don’t like that so I get called by my middle name – that’s Danielle, but that’s too long, so call me Dani, with an i. What’s your name?”

She sighed. Very slowly, very carefully, she put her throwing stars down to form the word _B-r-i-a-n-n-a._

“Brianna?” gasped Dani-not-Leighton with wide eyes. “That’s a _princess_ name.”

Brianna rolled her eyes and flopped back onto her seat. They were almost at school, and she had to make sure every single ninja star went back into her pack ‘cause her mom wouldn’t buy her any more if even one was missing. The bus was nearly empty by the time she looked up, but Dani was standing right beside her when she got to her own feet, her hand out and her blue backpack slung over a shoulder.

Brianna eyed Dani’s hand for a few minutes before she took a deep breath and laced their fingers together. It wasn’t an easy choice, but she made it.

Together, they left the bus, Dani almost skipping to catch up with the rest of the gang. Her words were part of what would govern Brianna’s whole life. Part of what would light her way.

“Come on, Brianna,” she said. “We’re gonna go on an adventure!”

And an adventure was what it would be.


End file.
